elle ne saura quoi

in what distant deeps or skies
burnt the fire in thine eyes?
…
and what shoulder, and what art?
could twist the sinews of thy heart?

— william blake

—

ladies and gentlemen, the topic of today’s interdisciplinary studies class is applied physics.

refractive index:
the extent to which a material bends the rays of illumination passing through its boundary.
the higher a material’s refractive index, the greater the distortion.

total internal reflection:
a phenomenon in which no light is allowed to escape from the interior of a material, due to (a) the material’s high refractive index and (b) the oblique angle at which light hits the material’s surface.

—

today’s lesson:
the refractive index of the soul is greater than that of the eye.

as wise minds have realized since antiquity, the refractive index of the soul is so high that few can shine the light of introspection at the proper angle to see anything resembling a true picture.
the eye, however, renders much more accurate images.

the result:
most of us are generally aware of our physical “type”.
however, most of us — especially the young and innocent, whatever their age and level of experience — will have no clue whether a particular context or situation will press our arousal buttons.
until…
it just happens.

the refractive index of the soul is high indeed.

—there is a grim equivalence between the woman who, despite her plaintive lamentations of being repeatedly used and abused, continues to seek badder and badder bad boys, and the man who, despite his vocal denunciation of mercenary sluts, continues to seek provocatively-dressed and -made-up women whose every word, gesture, and subtext is designed to lull men’s instincts with the Soma of concentrated, aggressive sexuality before moving in for the coup de grâce.

we just don’t learn.

projected from the wrong angle, the light will never reach our consciousness.

total internal reflection.

—

moreover, many of our most primal situational triggers are strictly prohibited in polite society. in fact, one could form a reasonably accurate definition of “polite society” just from knowing which drives must be starved, suppressed, and shunted into more materially productive endeavors.

the result?
if and when one of these situations rears its beautifully ugly head, its raw reptilian appeal will be doubled by the sweet taste of forbidden fruit, and compounded further by deafening cognitive dissonance.

non cogito, ergo sum.
descartes was wrong.
the more our rationality is shattered, the more we feel alive.

—

now, we’ll get even more interdisciplinary, and discuss inequalities.

men are primarily aroused by concrete visual and behavioral stimuli, which are easily understood and identified.
women are primarily aroused by situational, contextual, and subtextual stimuli, which are refracted beyond recognition for all but the most coldly perceptive among us.

therefore, women’s relative powerlessness in resisting skilled seduction is real.
and actionable.
and capable of being exploited.

Sample Problem 1
if one gold-digger can dig gold from ten men, and one blessed seducer can dig gold from ten such gold-diggers, then this seducer shall receive __________

also, equalists, read the following and weep:
there is limited justification here for the claims of women caught in affairs and infidelities that “it just happened” and that they are thus less complicit in their transgressions than are men.
specifically:if a woman is subconsciously and primally seduced by a new and exciting situation, context, or subtext — of whose appeal she is really, truly, and fully unaware at the outset — then, much to the chagrin of her long-term partner, her claims of being helpless, passive prey are the naked truth.

things really do “just happen”.

this is not to excuse the ultimate conduct of such women: “is” and “ought” are not the same, nor are explanation and justification.
however, it must be accepted that women, much more than men, will find themselves in situations that stealthily build up unconscious, unexpected arousal. indeed, in less than the time required for that reptilian arousal to diffuse to the cortex, a well-executed seduction can reach fever pitch, insurmountable by any earthly means.

—

Exercise 1
the policy implications of the above, concerning men’s and women’s differential freedom of movement and association, are left as an exercise for the reader, but i will be helpful enough to point out that herein lies full justification for assigning much stricter curfews, rules, and punishments to daughters than to sons — and likewise for wives vis-à-vis husbands.

Exercise 2
likewise left as an exercise for the reader is the role of non-earthly means — such as ardent, irrational religious faith — in countering women’s otherwise irresistible arousal.
hi gorbachev!

if a woman is subconsciously and primally seduced by a new and exciting situation, context, or subtext — of whose appeal she is really, truly, and fully unaware at the outset — then, much to the chagrin of her long-term partner, her claims of being helpless, passive prey are the naked truth.

I find myself in agreement. It’s hard to blame women for their weaknesses.

No, wait; it’s easy to blame women for their weaknesses. But it’s wiser not to.

And to see your own soul, you really have to have a good mirror and a chiropractor, because you’ll be bending yourself out of shape to do it.

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. So skip the masses; create an intelligence explosion by giving the cognitive elite working intelligence augmentation. Mainly by harnessing computing power to let the text flow. Instead of discrete spreadsheets, docs and graphics, an algorithmic workflow congruent with human mental operation, but compensating its organic limitations. Capitalizing on evanescent insight and brute force comparison alike. Transforming the stalemate of effort versus frailty into a steady deliberate advance.

A cripple has good reason, time and technology willing, to build a better biped, however much the sprinters scoff.

Been lurking here for a few days since I saw your announcement on SDae’s blog.

So this analogy of the “soul” — does it have an ounce of the literal to it? Or is it merely allegorical?

I have been hearing guys remark on how they see my soul since I was a young schoolgirl. They would tell me that I have a good soul. Perhaps it was just projection, or their idealized image of me, but I have heard this from multiple sources.

The second point of “non-earthly” means is quite provocative. Have you a bit of the mystic or spiritualist streak? Or perhaps religious. Do you believe in the possibility of a spiritual bond between a man and a woman?

And to see your own soul, you really have to have a good mirror and a chiropractor, because you’ll be bending yourself out of shape to do it

allegory of the day:

consider the way in which all of us are accustomed to looking at our own mirror images. sometimes we normalize the mirror image to such an extent that, upon looking at pictures of us taken by others, we are shocked at the apparent asymmetries and distortions that we see.
invariably, we all find our own mirror images more attractive than our true portraits.

now, consider the entirely analogous shock that we receive when looking over the shoulder of another, at that person’s image in a mirror.
the same effect is invariably observed: we are again shocked at the apparent asymmetries and distortions.
invariably, we all find the true appearance of others more attractive than their mirror images.

to see ourselves as others see us, we need not one but two mirrors, which, positioned at clever enough angles, can allow us to see any part of ourselves.

to see our own souls, first we look with one mirror, then we look with two mirrors, and we contemplate the differences.
where does our soul lie?
in the one mirror?
in the reflection of the two?
in the differences between the resulting images?

and of the myriad parts of ourselves that we simply can’t see with one mirror, but must discover through the use of two? if we then reflect these images through a third mirror, what do we see?

sdaedalus:To satisfy my curiosity, please answer both of the following

pah!
to think you could play these i’llputanevenbiggerhooparoundthehoopyouwantmetojumpthrough games so of easily with the likes of me, when you’ve not so much as deigned to answer the original exercises.

hope:
you always seem to spring eternal in other areas of the blogosphere, so it was only a matter of time before you showed yourself here.

So this analogy of the “soul” — does it have an ounce of the literal to it? Or is it merely allegorical?

as long as today is applied physics day, consider the example of gravitational and electrical “fields”.

some experts regard such fields only as mental constructs, designed to ease the understanding of the way in which otherwise mysterious forces work — constructs that have no independent existence in the absence of two or more gravitationally or electrically interacting objects.
others believe that the fields are literal entities, existing in their own right even in the absence of such objects.

as a man of action over thought, i find such quibbles unnecessary in the first place; i’d rather simply characterize and harness such “fields” to my advantage, considerations of their literal existence be damned.

if controlling the very soul of another has the same effect whether the soul is real or allegorical, does this make the soul real by default? or does it just dissolve the boundary between the real and the allegorical?

anouk:You have a fiercely analytical way about you –so your needing/wanting the highest level of dominance over her correlates

if i have an exquisite understanding of human nutrition, do i have a greater need for essential vitamins and minerals than would somebody with less understanding?

i think it’s a mistake to define my nature independently of my experiences, or even to hypothesize that such an independent nature exists after the accumulation of sufficient experience.

in my life, there have been few meaningful boundaries between the notions of duty, survival, necessity, action, and, most importantly character. a man who must fight in order to survive the external world, over time, becomes a man who must fight in order to survive the internal world.

the only boundary between recognizing what works and becoming what works is luxury — the luxury of inaction.
for those of us who have that luxury, what we need to do to stay “alive” is a function of our personalities.
for those of us who don’t, our personalities are a function of what we need to do to stay alive.

Plenty crash and burn every day. But yeah, that aspect would not be my main mass-market selling point

that’s not what i meant.
what i meant is that, of people i’ve met with sufficient analytical capability to turn the lens inward, most have been too haughty to do so until their lives begin to crumble beneath their feet.

surprisingly, most analysts are no better at analyzing themselves than are most guards at guarding themselves.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

pah!
to think you could play these i’llputanevenbiggerhooparoundthehoopyouwantmetojumpthrough games so of easily with the likes of me, when you’ve not so much as deigned to answer the original exercises.

Have you a bit of the mystic or spiritualist streak? Or perhaps religious.

i’m a contradiction — an analyst in theory, an animist in practice. as you can see, i couldn’t even study high-school physics, the atacama desert of dry subjects, without constructing metaphysical analogies.
a boy’s gotta do what a boy’s gotta do.

Do you believe in the possibility of a spiritual bond between a man and a woman?

i see no point in fucking a woman at all unless i’m going to fuck her body, her mind, and her soul.

No other man can measure up against my husband, because he has bonded me to him spiritually. Physical bonds are laughably weak by comparison. I was his before he even laid a hand on me.

There is no way to describe this kind of thing without sounding a bit crazy. He also speaks in analogies, and he does not speak of such matters often. But when he does, it’s like he’s Jesus and I’m his personal disciple.

There’s also the very real feeling that we “know” each other, like we’re two people made of the same mold and material, separated and now made whole again. If one can find a certain type of body attractive, then we find the certain type of soul that the other possesses to be attractive.

Incidentally, he had drawn a female who looked very much like me (long dark hair, same body type) on a card named “Hope” before we met. And we met while I was using that as a nickname.

I do not need to resist any charms from any “skilled seducer.” Other men exist to me the same way that other women do — interesting but not able to provoke any psychological “arousal.” This was not the case with my previous relationships. I was not very loyal, until now.

hopeNo other man can measure up against my husband, because he has bonded me to him spiritually. Physical bonds are laughably weak by comparison. I was his before he even laid a hand on me.

yep. thus exemplifying the greater, more general point of what i mean when i speak of the power of unearthly means.

see, this sort of religious faith — whether directed toward one of the mainstream religions or toward a, shall we say, spiritual leader — is the only countering force that exists at the same deep, unconscious level as the female libido.
conventional notions of morality pale in comparison, since moralizing requires conscious thought to connect the dots. if you aren’t handed the pen with which to connect those dots until after an unconscious seduction has reached five-alarm intensity, the resulting cognitive dissonance will merely stoke, rather than extinguish, the flames.
put simply:
being a naughty girl is twice the fun.
being an apostate, not so much.

I feel like everyone is getting off on who can type out the most illest lines that say something indirectly. Banter among the super elite who have supreme command of the English language. Speaking in code.

I’m just trying to learn more about game.

[ed: dude, this is the honors class. no one said this shit was going to be easy.]

@ Narciso
“But yeah, that aspect would not be my main mass-market selling point”

Yes, I understood. The pronoun here was intended to refer to introspective self analysis, in needless defiance of English grammar.

On the other hand, self analysis is like crack for narcissists, non? Although this is not palmistry.

Ultimately the ambitious can be drawn in by the possibility of grasping their dream, then drawn inward by the necessity of repairing their faults. There is no need to criticize anyone; events objectively viewed will make this plain in the inoffensive privacy of self counsel.

Yet even if facts weigh against the ego with all the weight of the Atlantic on Dutch berms, no change occurs without the addition of a psychological toolset enabling self-directed personality change – a breach in the walls of self. Nobody blames himself without ready remedy, or will undertake effort that implicitly does the same.

By the way, how much of this is simply mammalian principles learnable from animal trainers, I wonder? Bitch training and efficient behavior modification? I am downloading these books to skip ahead, so to speak.

Through circumstances which I naturally consider no fault of my own, I have grown up cold, at least on the surface. I seek a return to congruent mammalian emotional alignment, ie more capacity for naked warmth. I want to distill these to their purest principles, to maximize their potency as reagents in self modifying psychological symbolism. Having stilled the mind, I seek to stir the heart.

I think I just found the answer in this sentence from Cesar’s Way: “There’s a unique neediness in American dogs—I’ve seen it in their eyes and felt it in their energies from the first day I crossed over the border into the United States. America’s pet dogs long to have what most dogs in the wild have naturally: the ability simply to be dogs, to live in a stable, balanced pack.”

This is THE basic human need, THE basic human value. What makes things “Amazing,” as Cesar so often expostulates. The sun by which all other values fall into proper alignment.

By this, I can be congruently warm to people in a way cold intellect would never permit. Without this, intellect would always act as a stifling barrier to friendship, filtering raw mammalian feeling through layers of unnecessary abstraction. I have my reagent.

You like the physics analogies, but they are inexact and reductive. Also, the properties of light as used here are a little off.

A corollary to your point on female lack of self-awareness/self-control: Might this be the reason for ASD, LMR, etc.? At least inasmuch as they are innate behaviors and not constructs or aspects of social shaming (which of the two isn’t clear, and can very from culture to culture, person to person, situation to situation). In other words, nature gives the female limited sexual self-awareness but also provides powerful instinctive behaviors to counter this.

Just a thought – not wedded to this theory, though I’ve wondered about it for a while – thoughts and discussion welcome.

I feel like I have stepped into a nineteenth century salon. All that’s missing is the pianoforte and some decadent hats. As for the point of the post. A quote from my favorite musical Into The Woods (basically my barletts) that applies quiet well to this is:
“How do you know what you want till you get what you want and you see if you like it?”

I don’t believe that women should be less accountable. For example if their arousal buttons are being triggered they are aware of it, and have the capacity to leave the situation. They may not be able to accurately predict why they are aroused, but with even a little introspection I believe one can become cognizant of arousal. It may take them longer to realize that they are indeed aroused. But most women know when they are aroused, they’re just not sure why.

@ jbYet even if facts weigh against the ego with all the weight of the Atlantic on Dutch berms, no change occurs without the addition of a psychological toolset enabling self-directed personality change – a breach in the walls of self.

@ mauriceYou like the physics analogies, but they are inexact and reductive. Also, the properties of light as used here are a little off

yeah yeah.
dude, i don’t really care about the physics in the physics textbook; i care about the poetry and imagery in the physics textbook.
poetry/imagery and scientific exactness are, after a certain point, antithetical to one another.

A corollary to your point on female lack of self-awareness/self-control: Might this be the reason for ASD, LMR, etc.? At least inasmuch as they are innate behaviors

mmhmm

wait, it gets worse:
this is also the innate reason for “i’m just now realizing the full extent of what happened last night, so i’m going to retroactively cry rape”.
if you understand the female standpoint, it actually starts to make sense.
it’s sickening, it will fuck up your world, and it may make you literally sick to the stomach, but now you understand that raw revenge is not these women’s only motivation.

scientific/rational thinking is one modality of thinking.
religious thinking is another.

scientific/rational thinking builds airplanes, roads, the internet, artificial hearts, and all that good shit.

but…
for people who aren’t as strictly rationalist as you, religious thinking builds ethical frameworks, self-control, behavioral checks and balances, nationalism, teamwork, and all that other good shit, and can sometimes give life-saving inspiration.

—

hey man, your rational approach works with me.
but let’s try it on one of the twelve-year-old boys who walks through the door of my gym, despondent, broken, and just looking to hit things and tear shit up.
or on a man who’s just lost his legs after being hit by a drunk driver.

all those deathbed conversions you read about, even from famous historical rationalists?
a lot of those were real.

vasafaxa #33 –For example if their arousal buttons are being triggered they are aware of it, and have the capacity to leave the situation. They may not be able to accurately predict why they are aroused, but with even a little introspection I believe one can become cognizant of arousal. It may take them longer to realize that they are indeed aroused.
(emphasis mine)

the two boldfaced sentences contradict each other, my love.

also, for a woman you are unusually insightful in terms of rational thought processes (a common finding in women who hang out in these corners of the internet), and so you are forgetting that most women are essentially incapable of introspection.

for most women, “introspection” just means learning from past mistakes.
unfortunately, that requires … past mistakes.

I think what Vasafaxa means is not that a woman cannot identify the signs of arousal (if she an’t feeling them, they an’t happening imo) but that there may be a delay in her admitting to herself that she is being aroused (“I must be imagining this”) and indeed by whom (“I’m just feeling horny generally, this guy has nothing to do with it”)

This is particularly true, I might add, with women who come with a shopping list, where the man in question most emphatically is not on the list. A lot of time in such cases will be spent denying attraction, this is precisely when a seducer can move in for the kill.

Incidentally, although some (not all) women are probably capable of identifying in retrospect both the fact of the arousal and the person responsible for same, what they are almost never able to work out is why this particular person had this effect.

Your post on primal situational triggers will be *ahem* of profound interest in this regard.

The real question, of course, is whether or not lack of knowledge on the part of the woman is a pre-requisite to enjoyment of the process on the part of the man. A woman with some realisation of what is going on may indeed, as Gorbachev says, arouse curious stares, but is it the case that curious stares are *ahem* all that she arouses?

Play doggo means to keep silent, not to let on one knows what is happening. In other words, should a woman in this situation display any knowledge of the process or would this result in a derailment of the process.

I appreciate silence is a virtue. Regrettably, and I suspect this will come as no surprise to a man as perceptive as you, it has never been one of my salient virtues.

Indeed. This is an addition to one’s rational mental map, and it will produce experience that changes the deeper levels. My koanic stuff targets the middle layers of the psyche directly. They are orthogonal.

“i think it’s a mistake to define my nature independently of my experiences, or even to hypothesize that such an independent nature exists after the accumulation of sufficient experience.”

–Women like their men experienced, but not too much so. Be careful. Again, the point of no return is non-refundable. It is specifically your experiences that speak here, in your writings. You are hard, I can feel it. At least that is what you convey. The zero-sum game occurs only when one has no heart or has long since misplaced it. If a man is cold, a woman cannot get turned on unless she is damaged in some way, either emotionally or psychologically. If she is healthy, she will leave. You guys know this and have had it happen, I’m sure.

I had an experience once with a man I was unaware of his being cold. I was interested when I thought he was of the human race and when I began to realize that he was not, I dried up. I cannot contend with no heat, no heart. What’s the point(?)– there is no risk and no life to it. How would I feel “alive” as you say?

You sound like you hold all the power. I want to hear stories of when you didn’t. What was her name?

I measure the worth of what I’m reading by how many notes I take per word of text, and narciso, I believe you’ve set a record with this blog.

I know of only one entity (sometimes I think “you” are a group, like the Army of the 12 Monkeys) that does what you do with text; it shows in your uniquely incisive way of cutting to the heart of the matter when responding to questions.

[ed: thanks for the kind words. i’m one guy, although my background is weird and wonderful enough that i suppose i’m more like a group at times.
or maybe it’s just the voices in my head.]

I’ve been reading your messages from the future posted across the internet under different aliases for more than 10 years (*), and this is your best work yet. Please keep talking – I, for one, am listening.

Sharing my personal speculations on a pen name that hasn’t been used in 10 years doesn’t constitute a breach of privacy. It’s not like I’m sharing a real name or even a current pen name. Most people will think I’m off my rocker, but maybe a few people will understand and have the chance to enjoy some of the Author’s early work.

Anyway, it’s not so much a “writeprint” (though that helps) as it is the vast gulf in intelligence & street smarts between our dear Author and pretty much everyone else on the internet. If Usain Bolt tried to run a race with a wig and a nose job, people would still recognize him from his speed alone.

One distinguishing characteristic is the extraordinary way our Author responds to comments & questions. Three examples:

3. https://hvren.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/between-the-lines/#comment-289
“Is your heart (1)the lack of all colors of light, or (2)an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment?” a third, more physically correct, interpretation could be that my heart absorbs all wavelengths of light, all the time, but only gives off perceptible light when heated (with link to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbody)

When you see Brock Lesnar you can’t help noticing what a beast he is. No matter how hard you train you will never be able to outfight this guy. Similarly with our Author – I’m a smart guy, but what he does in text is so far beyond what anyone else is doing that I can’t even define it let alone explain it. But I can recognize it when I see it.

Finally, narciso, to give my personal opinion on an old question: yes, it is possible to alter the course of history with words.

Your own writing style, dear author, has some particular characteristics which are not entirely unfamiliar. As you mentioned already, it is very difficult to disguise writeprint withough killing the message.

I’m always struck by the number of blog wars round here, also the amount of personal comments posted on sites re. the author of that site, sometimes speculating on a past life, sometimes on their private life. In some cases, these comments & the related politics may be the funniest thing about the site. In this case, though, the substantive posting is actually good enough to make the site worth reading on its own account, I would hate if it had to cease because of fear of identity disclosure.

Also, the site is so new, that a full biography of the author is probably premature, as it becomes established, things may change in this regard.

Soft to the touch and with so many style options, this line has already proved to be a hit.
With time as Ecclesiastical purses picked up craze amongst general audience these became
quite significant. WASP Bags are available for purchase online
through waspbags.